Nearly wordless week away

The leaves were just beginning to turn.

Brother was in a car accident -- hit & run, he's pretty battered, but it could have been so much worse.

Nephew is learning card tricks.

 

Our family home is nearly empty. {sigh}

 

Visited Mom; the grass has filled in over her.

 

Saw the sun rise & the moon set in the Flint Hills on the way home.

Just curious

Are you an in-y or an out-y? Not your bellybutton, but how you fold your quilts.

It is my theory that there are 2 kind of people in the world: those who fold their patchwork to the inside &  those who fold their patchwork to the outside.

I fold my patchwork to the outside -- from blocks to top to finished quilt. In the unfinished stage, to my way of thinking, it reduces stress on the raw seams & protects them from fraying.
As a finished quilt, I just like seeing the finished patchwork folded along the edge.
But I can appreciate that someone else might fold their patchwork to the inside to protect it from harm & keep it clean.

Which kind of person are you?

A quilt for a Super Fan

That would be my Mother-in-law -- she loves her Jayhawk basketball!

I volunteered to make her a quilt with her commemorative t-shirts -- they span 27 years, 1986 to 2013. It don't think it could be KU-ier! I hope she likes it.

On the changing of goals for a quilter

In the past few years I have kept more quilts than I have in my more than 30 years of quilt making.

My younger quilter friends are in that place in life where I used to be: that is, maintaining a long list of friends getting married & friends having babies -- and all *have* to be gifted with quilts. Not that these friends are demanding quilts, but we quilters feel they need quilts for these special occasions. There is little time for making quilts to keep!

Thirty years down the road, I still make the occasional wedding quilt (2nd marriage, marriage of a son or daughter) or baby quilt (mostly grandchildren now or just a block contributed to a group quilt). In between, there were the first communion & graduation quilts, quilts for a new job in a new city, new home. As an older quilter, I've made quilts for mile-stone birthdays (40, 50, 60) & retirement, comfort quilts for a serious illness & after a death, memory quilts made with a loved one's clothing. 

Quilts are there for all the Big Life Events. 

But as I said, I'm keeping more quilts now. My stack has gone from 1 or 2 to a big ol' pile -- more than we really need down here on the Gulf coast! Am I making more quilts or are the Big Life Events a less compressed in time as we get older? I'm not sure. And I really don't care that much about having lots of quilts (though I'm not ready to part with any of the ones here) -- most of all, I love making them. So I'm trying to balance making-to-keep with making-to-give-away. 

The 2nd stack of give-away quilts doesn't look like much since none of them are actually finished, but there's a dozen of them there, mostly lap quilts, some baby quilts & not in the photo are the ones in-progress & the few that are finished. I'm having such fun pulling out-of-date fabrics & making things with them. (One of my all-time favorite quilts, from back in the day, was made with fabrics given to me by a friend of Shug's; I didn't like any of the fabrics -- too ditsy & sweet -- but I really liked the quilt I made with them. It's a great challenge, making something you like with something you don't love or don't love anymore -- try it!) 

And using up my fabric oldies is making room for new fabric -- everyone wins!!!

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

I've been working on another quilt top using polyester double knits.

My last trip north was for Memorial Day: I decorated my Mother's grave for the first time & made my last visit to my parents' home. During that last visit, I found a big box full of polyester double knit scraps. I might have been able to toss them in the trash had it not been for the, then, latest issue of Generation Q, the one with the article about  Victoria Findlay Wolf & Bill Volkening & their fondness for double knit quilts.

{sigh}

So, OK, I brought the big box home with me.

These are the leftovers from dressmaking. Largely, they are scraps from the garments my Mom made for me & her, but there were also several pieces from both of my Grandmothers. They are such a testament of Thrift: the garment pieces were cut from the cloth, then *every* little leftover bit was neatly bundled together & stowed away. I am unwrapping these bundles for the first time since they were made more than 30 years ago!

I decided to make a 16-patch block with them -- simple patchwork is best with this weird, stiff stuff. I'm really enjoying going through the fabrics, remembering the dresses & pantsuits (yes, pantsuits) that they became & the love that made them. Such a journey down Memory Lane! And not really a melancholy one, just fun remembering.

An acquaintance looked at my blocks & told me they were ugly. Had I valued her opinion, my feelings might have been hurt. I'll admit that they are certainly an acquired taste, but "ugly"?
No, they are not ugly.

Selfish Sewing Week

Did you know about this?

September was National Sewing Month & imagine gnats & Made with Moxie declared the 4th week of the month as "Selfish Sewing Week".

I would have *loved* to have played along! Not that there isn't always a generous serving of selfishness in all my sewing, but I have been doing quite a bit of sewing for others recently & many, many projects that are mostly just for my own entertainment have been calling to me.

But last week wasn't a good one! I had a crummy cold, work & two (yes, TWO!) jury duties -- county & city (not on a jury either time, but still).

Blech.

So I'm going to celebrate this week -- heck, I might even celebrate for the rest of the year -- except for the t-shirt quilt for my MIL, the late milestone birthday quilt for a friend, my up-coming contributions for Guild baby & wedding quilts, a small sewn gift for another friend's birthday & my on-going stash bust of lap & baby quilts for donation. ;-)



p.s. I L!O!V!E! the buttons they created, but can't get them to work, so I did a mock-up version.
(no gin was harmed in the taking of this photograph)

My Museum

The always adorable & very generous Beth at Love Laugh Quilt is hosting a link-up. The purpose of the link-up: to show our beloved, collected & hoarded old sewing things. Anyone who has stopped by my blog more than once would, I think, not be at all surprised that *I* have lots of beloved, collected & hoarded old sewing things.
I am from a long line of sewing women, sewing women who never got rid of anything -- because that is what you did then, you saved & scrimped, mended & made do. Many of those things have ended up with me. Some I use, some I decorate with, some I just pull out from time to time to look at & love.

So what is in my museum?
This is the top of my fabric cabinets. There on the left is the sewing basket -- mine in yellow -- like Beth's blue one, a stellar pincushion/oddity that I found at a thrift shop, Mom's jars of wooden spools, my toy sewing machine & iron, Mom's toy iron.

On my sewing room wall is this funny little shelf. It must have been built to hold spools -- there are little pegs on the tiny shelves. And so I filled the pegs with old, handed-down spools & added some cards of buttons & a needle book.

 

On my sewing table, not so much sewing accessories, as re-purposed sewing accessories. Grandma's depression glass cookie jar filled with spools of thread. Mom's odd flower frog holding pencils, seam ripper, etc. Great-great grandmother's compote dish holding bobbins & sewing machine feet. And a goofus glass bowl filled with cut fabric ready to sew.

Another re-purposed sewing accessory is my old metal dollhouse. I anguished over whether or not to keep it -- where would I put it? what would I do with it? Then the perfect use came to me!

Lastly, one drawer of the cabinet of my Grandma's treadle sewing machine. In it, along with spools of thread & the spindle-like bobbins that fit the machine were buttons, pennies, crayons, chalk, pill bottles filled with snaps & hooks & eyes, those little stocking holders snipped from girdles -- & string. Quite a lot of string. All carefully wound around bits of cardboard, old envelopes & labeled: Short Pieces, Long Pieces, Longer Pieces. I find them so very touching. I will never get rid of them.

Thanks for the idea, Beth.
It is always to fun to share a trip down Memory Lane!

Balls in the Air

There's a woman in my Guild who says she has just one project going at a time -- she works it till it is done & only then will she begin something new. No UFOs in her house! How smart, but, to my way of thinking, just a bit dull.

Me, I love having several projects at different stages of completion -- when I tire of cutting, I piece a while; weary of piecing, try some quilting; bored with quilting, maybe sketch for a bit. I have the luxury of having more than one machine, so all this jumping around is a bit easier. (But I have to be mindful of which machine is piecing what project -- I've found that not all quarter-inch machine feet are created equal!)

Maybe because the weather is so miserable (see my previous post), maybe because I'm finally getting over my focus-less funk, I'm not sure the reason, but right now I have an especial LOT of projects going: 2 gift quilts & a 3rd I'm thinking about, the Tower of Owls, 2 other projects with Stash Creatures to be revealed later, a simple tessellating block with an old jelly roll, a 16-patch using double knit scraps, a re-make of an old quilt, & a percolating idea that may be ready to begin.




 
Phew! A bit excessive even by my standards.

I wish it was hotter & more humid --

Said no one!

EVER!!!!

On Flickr, Instagram, blogs, I see much of the Northern Hemisphere getting out their woolens, hanging quilts to air, making pots of hearty, warming soups.

Not us.
I has been a long, hot, humid but rain-less summer that will probably go on & on & on.

Creatures From Deep in My Stash

Cue scarey organ music.

Unfortunately/fortunately, I've gotten rid of some of the uglier & more embarrassing pieces from my stash, but I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the ones I've held on to -- for better or worse. I won't show you them all at once, my creatures will be a recurring feature we'll come back to from time to time.

First, some real creatures: fishes, bunnies, ponies, owls & wild things from the American West. (I'm not including my cat fabrics -- that's a topic on its own!) How did these come to be in my stash? Well, the ponies & national parks critters were from the remnant bin, both about 1yard cuts -- I don't know why I bought them other than they probably didn't cost very much. The fish & rabbit cut-outs I probably planned on making up as pillows -- whimsical, right? The owls are a fairly recent purchase; I was making reusable shopping bags for everyone on my Christmas list one year & one friend has an especial fondness for owls. I found them on sale, asked for a yard & ended up with 2 yards.



I still like these fabrics (she said sheepishly (no creature pun intended)). I think I can find time to use them. And, most importantly, I think I can have fun making something fun with them.

So, let's see.

I think the owls could be interesting cut into strips, just their little eyes peeking out. They combine nicely with the stack of browns I got a few years ago. So maybe log cabins, maybe simple string blocks? Or! Maybe a teetering stack, inspired the Totally Tubular technique in Tula Pink's first book. I LIKE it!



The ponies with dots & swirls are kind of fun  -- what about wonky stars with pony centers? (Is it just me, or does that sound like a children's breakfast cereal? Wonky Stars with Pony Centers! Now with MORE Ponies!!!
No? Just me? OK.)



Hmmm, the fish & bunnies? I've seen real make-do quilts, the Gee's Bend quilts for example, that use these cut-out panels as just another piece of cloth. But I've cut around my pieces, so can't do that. What about using them as applique -- trout swimming on top of patchwork, rabbits with some garden-y fabrics?



And the big game? My inclination with a fabric like this is to highlight the fabric with fussy cutting, maybe a square as the center of a medallion quilt. But I think it would be too easy to let this fabric look too lodge-y. One of my favorite things to do is to try to make something "modern" with very not-modern fabric. So what about something inspired by a painting from the 1940s by the artist Leon Polk Smith? Still very much a work-in-progress, I'm having a good time with this one!



And who knows, maybe the trout will show up on the back!

Chemistry

So there was this very popular quilt block, Camille Roskelley's Swoon -- a grand block, I hardly saw one I did not admire. I wanted to make one of my own. And there was Marcia Derse's fabrics, painterly & rich -- a stack came home with me from Quilt Festival, but I had no plans for them.

Say, what if I introduce Swoon & Derse?!? I think they might like each other!

It was like hooking up two friends on a blind date. Hello. How are you? Then, magic started happening, soon they were wondering who is that third wheel hanging around them.

Me! It's ME!! I introduced you!!!

That's how I feel about this quilt. I merely introduced two amazing individuals -- a great pattern & beautiful fabrics. I did make a few changes to the pattern so the large-scale fabrics weren't so cut up; and I chose the color & print pairings; for quilting, I used a manipulated stitch I first used in a machine quilting class with Mary Mashuta & have seen used by Jacquie Gehring; the back is 2 gorgeous fabrics, gifts from my brother, screen-printed in Hawaii.

But, well, the rest was just Chemistry.

What's the quilting equivalent of burpees?

In a recent post about my fabric "problem", I & several people who commented to the post, made a parallel between fabric acquisition & usage to health & fitness.

Easy -- if you want to diminish your amount of fabric/lose weight, use more/burn more fabric/calories than you buy/eat.
Well, easy in concept.

I've been wishing for a quilter's version of Jillian Michaels, someone over my shoulder at the sewing machine shouting, "Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me!" to help keep me on track with piecing & quilting. (Not really. That wouldn't be stressful at all, would it?) These days I'm having real trouble sitting & focusing for long on anything, that includes my patchwork. I've been making the effort to spend time each day on my Physical Fitness. So to attain Fabric Fitness, I need to dedicate a similar amount most days to cutting/piecing/quilting.

After my workouts with dvd Jillian (which do include burpees) I'm trying to get together with a sewing machine, iron or rotary cutter & spend serious time plowing through fabric. This weekend I added to my pile of self-made quilt kits -- strips, squares & triangles for donation quilts. I also cut some strips for a project to keep. And I basted 2 quilts (one is already quilted!).
Not too shabby!

"Intention! Power!! Push yourself!!! Don't phone it in!!!!!"

The Flow

finished quilt -- about 70 x 84 inches
fabrics -- Denyse Schmidt's Florence & Kona natural
machine pieced & quilted

A very bad day -- and trying to learn from it

I think I've mentioned before that my Mother taught me to sew.

I don't really remember any details of being taught, mostly I remember the products: Pepper's skirt & blouse (I remember learning the lazy daisy embroidery stitch, being fascinated by the name), a dirndl skirt made with Black Watch plaid (another intriguing name). It feels like I've always sewn, the lessons were so easy & effortless that they didn't feel like learning.



I do recall the times I was sewing on my own, when I would hit some "tragic" snag -- a badly done zipper, an eased seam that wouldn't fit, an accidentally snipped hole. I would be ready to ball it up & put it in the trash, probably did this more than once. But my Mom would gather up my project & patiently, methodically fix my failure & return it to me as good as new or nearly so.

She was never a quilter, so I don't know that she would have been able to fix my latest failure.
I finally finished my Denyse Schmit's Florence top, pieced together a back & was ready to sandwich & baste. I usually do this outside but it had threatened rain all day. I usually do this early in the day but by the time I had gotten the top & back ready it was evening. I usually have Shug help me but he was busy with his own stuff so I didn't ask. So I did it on my own, a little tired, in a cramped space & ended up with a bubble-y, pleat-y mess. I wadded it up & walked away. 

 

Had it not been 8:00 Sunday evening, I would have called Goodwill to come get all my fabric & machines because I was FINISHED with quilting.

A new day brought a clearer head. I not-so-patiently (patience: not my strong suit),  methodically & with Shug's help fixed my failure. ('Good as new' remains to be seen.)

 

I miss her like crazy but my Mom is still teaching me.

That's MS. You-Have-Too-Much-Fabric to YOU, buster!

Can one have too much fabric?

Well, I think maybe one can. More specifically, yes, I think maybe I do.

I'm feeling buried alive by the fabric in my sewing room. I've been quilting for more than 30 years (OMG!), sewing for longer than that. I'm not sure when I began collecting/amassing fabric, but it has been accumulating for a long, long time.

Pretty fabric, on sale fabric, on a whim fabric, thrifted fabric, inherited fabric -- it's all there on my shelves. Big yardages for clothing, small cuts for a specific project (did I finish that project? did I even *begin* it?) Fabric bought on trips, fabric given as a souvenir of some else's trip. More & more & more.

The quilt shops were smart when they started cutting fat quarters -- just a sweet, inexpensive taste, like the little spoons at the ice cream shop -- perfect for a small gift, a little pick-me-up. Then the manufacturers began selling pre-cuts -- the beginning of *my* undoing. At first I thought, what can you do with a stack of 5 inch squares!?! Then I began to enjoy the restrictions of the 5 & 10 inch squares, the 2.5 inch strips -- I often cut my yardage into these dimensions. I found working within the structure a bit like haiku, kind of fun & freeing once you get into it.

For the last several years, when my Mom was in nursing care & I was spending 2 to 3 months of the year away from home visiting her, fabric shopping -- especially e-fabric shopping -- was my self-medication. I think most of us have seen those hoarding shows on television & know that the shopping isn't about the things being bought, it's about filling a hole, healing a hurt. Is it better or worse if you know what you are doing & do it anyway? I don't know, but it gave me something to look forward to when I got home from a sad & stressful trip. And an e-cart is so benign. Your purchases have no volume, just electrons, so it seems like nothing & so easy to "Proceed to Checkout". Then the giant box arrives at my door, like a present -- that is, until the bill comes.

The thing that is overwhelming me now is all the stuff I've been bringing back from my parents' home. A lifetime of things saved & things never gotten rid of -- clothing from nearly every stage of life of each member of my family, yard goods never used, scraps from dressmaking, hankies, linens -- there's even a silk parachute! -- etc, etc, etc. Baskets & bins & bags of it (oh, my).

I'm making a serious effort to realistically look over this new-to-me stuff & the stuff I already had, evaluate what I can use, what I will use, what I don't like or want anymore, what there just isn't enough hours in the day to get to.

 
But will I stop buying fabric? Not likely. Over the years I've learned that, for me, fasting leads to over-doing. Moderation works best, so I'll try to cut back.

I am really trying to cut back.

I LOVE these quilts: put a bird on it!

I grew up in a bird-watching family. When I was quite young, I could identify birds by their calls, their flight profiles, their habits. My parents had feeders up year round & watched them like television. The bird book & the binoculars were always close at hand. So bird-y things make me think of home & family & make me happy.
I haven't done an "I LOVE these quilts" in a while, so I thought I would do a "put a bird on it" edition. I have VERY MANY quilts with birds favorited on Flickr. Embroidered, appliqued, pieced, paper pieced, or just made with bird-printed fabric; realistic, abstract, whimsical, there are many many ways to make quilts that celebrate birds. Here are just a few that I LOVE!

This quilt, an heirloom belonging to Pearlzenith, was one of my earliest Flickr favorites. Her great-grandmother, a woman who preferred science & drawing to needlework, made the quilt. She may not have loved it, but she was clearly quite skilled with her needle. Her whimsical little birds are so adorable & well-made; she must have loved someone -- child? grandchild? -- very much to have made this sweet little quilt. What a treasure!



Another of my early Flickr favorites was made by run amok. Flying Birds made of 1 square & 2 HSTs -- so simple & so effective! I cannot imagine anyone looking at this quilt & not thinking of a swirling flock of birds. Her sky is a mix of blue & neutral solids, she used special vintage kimono fabrics for her birds. I would really love to make my own version of this quilt someday -- imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?!?!



Made by kellymeanix (she blogs at Pinkadot Quilts), this quilt is a charmer. A contemporary appliqued bird block surrounded by what look to be vintage fabrics in a cheery palette of blues & aquas, pinks & reds. And if it weren't bird-y enough, there are little birds & nests ink-stamped onto the white areas. It's little, but makes a big statement & what a great way to use some cherished fabrics!

 

PinkPlease! made this quilt for the MQG Kona Charm Challenge. Cute, chubby little bird shapes were cut from the solid charm squares -- the square without the bird was raw-edge appliqued to one side & the bird without the square was raw-edge appliqued to the other side. Very clever, very modern!



I admit to loving very nearly everything RachaelDaisy (she blogs at Blue Mountain Daisy) makes, but I do have especial favorites. "Oi Emu" is an especial favorite. This quilt was made for Corduroy Appreciation Day (11-11-11) & made wagga-style! Some corduroy trousers, some Aussie screen-printed fabrics, curtain scraps, an emu, a dash of rust & mustard & RachaelDaisy has made another awesome quilt!

I'm still here

Yeah, I'm here -- busy with work & having bad days & slightly better days & longing for time off for some rest & restoration.

I went north for Memorial Day. My brother & I went together to the family cemetery, stopping on the way to have a picnic lunch at a favorite spot of our parents'. The weather was sunny & mild, the country cemetery was pretty & it was very nice going together.

I am sewing some.
Mostly doing what Lynn Roddy Brown calls "mental health sewing" -- just assembling parts. More & more lap & baby quilt tops are getting made for donation -- I'm getting quite a stack! I'm also 'working' on 3 projects for other people: for a friend's birthday, an Irish Chain in shades of green -- simple, but slow-going because the 9-patches are 3 inches finished; Shug's 'birthday' shirt -- yes, the one I began last year -- it remains unfinished (hangs head in shame); & a Jayhawk basketball t-shirt quilt for my MIL, not begun, still in the thinking stage, but it should be fun to do.

I've also got the HMQG challenge with Denyse Schmidt's Florence line. 16 fat eighths. Sounds like a lot of fabric, but really isn't so much. The line made me think of prints from the 1940s, so I'm doing an old-school-ish block & using a muslin-like solid to stretch them. I like the way it is shaping up, I just need to sit down & do some piecing.

I have 4 quilts that I really want to get quilting on: Laura's Lightning -- a bit more than halfway done; I have an awesome back prepped for my Swoon blocks with the Marcia Derse fabrics -- I'm thinking of simple, wavy-line quilting; the little quilt made for the Michael Miller's Madrona Road challenge (I had thought I might give this little quilt to my Mom {sigh}); & my scrappy-trip-along with the cherry-chocolate-y fabrics is ready to sandwich.

But I tire easily, am restless & can't focus for long. So I'm not making any serious progress on any one project.

Going home

My Mom has always been a homebody. She loved her home more than anything. She & my Dad built their house, our home, in the mid-1950s; he lived there until he died in 2003; she lived there until she moved into the nursing home 4 years ago. We had been fearful that her transition out of the house would be difficult, but her mind & body were in such a state that she seemed to forget all about the home she had loved so dearly. Her room in 'memory care' immediately became her home.

When I drove north to visit her this past February, my brother said, for the first time, she was talking about wanting to "go home". We wondered what "home" she meant: her childhood home on the farm? her family home of more than 50 years? where? She wasn't fretful or insistent about it, she would just mention it from time to time then go on with other things.

Well, she's gone home now.

On the 3rd of April, during a very average day, she lay down for a nap from which she did not wake. While her death was not unexpected -- we've been slowly losing her for several years now -- we were very surprised. Her physical health was not great but was stable. We can only suppose that she was just tired & ready to go & the "home" she had been speaking of was not here on Earth.


Spring was just on the brink in the midlands. The forsythia were in bloom, as were the tulip & Bradford pear trees. Daffodils were up & flowering, tulips were up & budding. A warm sunny day or two would bring the redbuds to their full glory.